What is PRINTED MATTER?
Printed matter is anything that is printed such as zines, comics, prints, chap books, posters, books and everything in between. We’re interested in showcasing work that is DIY, independent, personal, peculiar, or just plain awesome.

The following is a timeline of anti-police activity from the triangle area in the last few months. We assembled this to help folks in digesting this recent period, connecting the dots of various, seemingly disparate kinds of activity, and strategizing about future efforts. This list is most certainly incomplete, and we would welcome any additions with links, pictures etc., which can be sent to triAanarchy@riseup.net .

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Aug 15th – The Chapel Hill Police Headquarters is vandalized by a group of anarchists claiming solidarity with prisoner Luke O Donovan, incarcerated for defending himself from homophobic violence in Atlanta, Ga, and with the ongoing uprising in Ferguson. Police cars are smashed out and spray-painted.

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August 22nd – Over 100 people hold an angry rally and proceed to march down Franklin St. In solidarity with the riots and protests in Ferguson. In response to a column in the Daily Tar Heel condemning the anger and tone of the protest, a piece is released online and in paper several days later that defends the protest. (more…)

Durham, NC – About 60 people marched to the Durham police headquarters, Dec. 19, to protest attacks by Durham riot police on peaceful protesters in recent weeks. The march kicked off with the chanting of Assata Shakur’s words, “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains!”

Led by organizers with Southerners on New Ground (SONG), demonstrators brought with them over 500 petition signatures demanding an end to police repression of activists.

In response to the lack of indictments of police in Ferguson, Missouri and New York in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, organizers in Durham have led several demonstrations over the last month, the largest of which saw hundreds occupy the streets of central Durham for hours. In several of these demonstrations, Durham police have reacted with force and deployed riot police to suppress the protesters. Adding insult to injury, the Durham police chief has also blamed “outside agitators” for the way protests have unfolded in recent weeks. (more…)

I’m glad to hear from someone like you and what you stand for is a real good thing, man. I was sitting in my cell reading the letter you sent me and I seen in one part of the letter you ask me if we could hear or see you all. Yea, we could see y’all outside the jail and on the news, too. I guess whoever has the power over the jail did not like that at all, so they put the whole jail on lockdown meaning that they put us in our cells when we still had time to be out. No showers, no looking at T.V., no phones, and you eat in your cell. The c.o.’s came in and said if we did not lock back they were going to beat and taze us, so we said “Don’t shoot, our hands is up” and we all locked back into our cell. For almost two weeks they were putting the jail on lockdown, and no one knows why, as the c.o.’s say. They taking the V.I. (visitation) from us, saying our fam have to go online to see us. But they still find a way to take our money. Man, it’s crazy, we need help in here!

We can see by your intelligence report that you’re curious and confused about the nature of this blog in particular, blogs in general, and possibly the entire Internet.

This is the Prison Books Collective Blog.

We link to lots of articles and announcements that we find relevant about prisons, policing and your criminal justice system, both locally and beyond.

You may notice we are not many things to which we link or events that we announce.

For instance we aren’t the Catholic Workers, Trianarchy, News and Observer, WRAL, Truth Out, Peter Gelderloos, Playboy, Denver Anarchist Black Cross, SubmediaTV, NPR, Amplify Voices, ThinkProgress, Anarchist News or Aljazeera; in fact the things that we are not go on and on and on.

DURHAM — On a day when members of African-American churches across the country wore black to protest fatal police shootings of unarmed black men, they were joined by members of four Triangle congregations who gathered in one of East Durham’s most troubled neighborhoods.

The group of about 75 people prayed, marched and blocked two intersections Sunday afternoon in a renewal of public protests against the killings. The event came less than a day after police arrested 11 people during a protest-related attempt to block the Durham Freeway in which police in riot gear confronted marchers. (more…)

some notes on tactics and strategy from Durham’s recent anti-police marches

On Friday, December 5th, ten days after hundreds of protesters took over the Durham Freeway in response to the ongoing murder of Black and Brown people, Durham took to the streets again. This protest was most immediately a reaction to the decision of a New York Grand Jury to not press charges against the cop who murdered Eric Garner, but it was clearly part of the same trajectory initiated by the August uprising in Ferguson, Missouri. A movement against the police has begun. This thing we are experiencing contradicts itself constantly, expressing itself simultaneously with molotov cocktails, flipped police cruisers, and outright hostility to police on the one hand and platitudes about peaceful protest and demands like body cameras and racial sensitivity training on the other. Nonetheless, a movement it has clearly become. At this point demonstrators have blocked highways and bridges in over 170 cities around the country, sometimes violently confronting police and burning or smashing entire city blocks. The East Bay has not stopped rioting for three weeks. Smaller or less spectacular actions—rallies, die-ins, teach-ins, etc—have occurred probably in the thousands. For many of us, this has become the most important social struggle of our (young) lives. Skills we learned in earlier movements apply now with urgency, and new skills and new ideas take hold at a rapid rate.

This movement was catalyzed and has been led by the uncompromising revolt of Black people, initially from those in a small, poor midwestern suburb few of us had ever heard of. Its central expression is an antagonism towards the white supremacy that defines modern American policing, echoed in the common chant “Black Lives Matter,” but its roots also reach deeply into other realms of class, economy, and gender. These deep roots, and the fact that continued demonstrations are no longer responding to any one single killing but rather a deep-set pattern, make cooptation or recuperation by authorities difficult. What could a single police chief or politician possibly do to assuage enough people’s concerns? What responsible Black leader could possibly lead the country into an era of “humane” policing? Realistically, there are no demands to be made, no leader or party who could “fix” the police, because the police are not broken. They’re doing exactly what they have been historically designed to do.

In line with such a perspective, we’ve focused this account of Durham’s most recent march not on questions of “the political” like making demands or pressuring city officials, but rather on how we can continue building our own power as a diffuse but growing crowd-in-motion. When we blockade or occupy the streets or buildings of our city, what makes us powerful? What are the strategies used by the police to contain our rage during protests, and how can we defeat them? These are questions of social relations, the trust and communication we have or have not built between us, and they are also questions of infrastructure, tactics, tools, movement, and space. Even for those still committed to reforming the police as an institution, with whom we firmly disagree, these questions are crucial, as the only way even modest reforms will take hold will be if we can succeed in becoming an actual threat to those in power. (more…)

For all humans locked up and their efforts to resist
Against prisons and the world that creates them

For the 4th year in a row, the hundreds of people held captive inside Durham jail — who are getting just two sandwiches for dinner and are freezing in their cells with no heat — will hear us on the outside and know that they are not alone and that their struggles will not be forgotten in 2015.

Wednesday, December 31, 2014
7:30PM
Meet at CCB Plaza (Corcoran & Chapel Hill Sts.), then march to the Durham County jail @ 217 S. Mangum St.

Bring signs and banners, drums, buckets, pots and pans, and anything that makes noise and light.
Bring your love and support for prisoners, your hopes and visions for liberation in 2015, and your rage and anger for a system that locks up our family, friends, and comrades.

LET’S KEEP MAKING NOISE.

For more about what’s going on inside the Durham jail, visit amplifyvoices.com.
Need a ride? Email insideoutsidealliance@gmail.com or call 919-666-7854

At 7pm on Friday, there will be an emergency demonstration to join in the chorus of outrage against the NYPD, whose murderer-cop was just let off with no charges after choking Eric Garner to death, on video. Garner was selling “loose cigarettes,” which in NYC is a petty crime, part of the state’s larger strategy of managing populations in poorer areas.

Whether the murderer is indicted or not really makes no difference. Whether cops wear body cameras, are forced into sensitivity trainings, or “are from the community” will make no difference. The cops are a historically white supremacist force, used to repress and manage poor people and people of color. There is no escaping this fact.

A year ago Durham took to the streets repeatedly in protest of the police murder of Chuy Huerta. On Tuesday November 25th we marched with Ferguson, shutting down NC-147 in a broad effort at disruption. That was just the beginning. Please show up Friday night with all your rage and anger at this disgusting, racist system.

Updates and alerts can be found by following @NC4Ferguson via twitter or by texting “Follow @NC4Ferguson” to 40404.